Glitter left the stream with questions about a few things on her mind. She starts to sob in her own bedroom:
“What’s the point of 100%ing NaNo?” Glitter starts crying. “Not only that, but after showing what 100%ing NaNo will mean to Caro earlier tonight makes me feel like she’s willing to just add more and more hockey games, or maybe more stuff outside of games if she accepts there’s too much hockey as it is! I’m not even sure it will be good even then…”
That’s the problem with 100%ing games: chasing the nooks and crannies of a game often detracts from the game’s core experience, and sometimes multiple playthroughs. That’s why I never 100%ed games on purpose, and also why I watched Caro to begin with. When MAA was around, I was playing, but by watching her, I watched her run content that I couldn’t do myself, Glitter starts thinking about Caroline’s last stream, a little after she left it over Caro suggesting her, for future streams this month, to leave after she has finished playing the battle pass quests for the day.
But as she finishes the last romance book she started, Glitter goes to bed, and her own sleep gets troubled with the cold, hard truth about to resurface in her dreams:
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Glitter found herself in a wooden cabin, surrounded by characters from past books she read. The oldest of them she readily recognized as a mafia leader, strangely looking like Stephen Harper, but others were male leads that were jealous and possessive, just not in the same position as the capo.
“Glitter, you don’t want to get killed, do you?” the mafia capo was about to bind her to a bed. “Do me a favor and…”
Another of these massive men interrupted the capo and was ready to high-stick Glitter while yet another of these men, ostensibly a mafioso grunt, bound her to the bed. “No, boss, let me hit her first!”
“You think you’re so tough now?” the capo drew his pistol.
“If I can’t have her, no one will!” the massive thug turned to the capo instead of going for the high stick on Glitter.
The capo shot at the thug’s hockey stick, breaking it apart, but narrowly missing the thug’s head.
Is that how it feels to be a dark romance female lead with a love triangle? Two people out-doing each other in a fight for the right to do horrible things to a girl? Glitter’s oneiric self watched, frozen in place by the restraints the mafioso grunt put on her. Or have someone else ensure their safety at a price maybe… even when the price might mean getting abused!
The capo then turned to the grunt, yelling at him. “Our hideout is under attack, and you sit there doing nothing!”
“I just need to ensure that she’s safe!” the grunt retorted before the capo throws part of the broken stick at the grunt. “I’m watching over her!”
The grunt narrowly evaded the broken hockey stick, which, unfortunately, hit Glitter’s oneiric self. Is that it? Am I destined to be a trophy wife to some criminal overlord? If so, why would I want to be in a relationship with a criminal overlord when I saw the consequences of being caught in the crossfire of gang warfare?
“And yet, somehow, I hope for nothing more than this pig who can’t even help himself berating his grunts to let me go!” Glitter realized that the grunt didn’t gag her.
And Glitter’s oneiric conscience rang alarm bells in her. Caro told you about how some dark romance books may very well be horror books. If you still hold on to notions that dark romance books are not the same as horror, try to read some horror books that are labeled as such. It’s not that your past reads are bad books per se, they are just horror books with a happy ending involving (one of) the villain(s) in a relationship with a lead!
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As she awakens from this nightmare, Glitter is left wondering what kind of horror books she should read. If I’m not mistaken, often people read romance with an eye on either relating to a lead or for wish fulfillment. It’s perfectly healthy to wish for a relationship with someone that will take care of you, or can afford to do so. But why do people wish for a relationship with someone with behavior issues on top of that, or at least willing to endure these as the price to pay to obtain it if they acknowledge the issue, unless they were dirt poor? So I guess I understand why people might want to read hockey romance, at least lower and middle-class readers: they’d know then which wish they can vicariously fulfill through one. But perhaps this inner monologue has dragged on for too long already.
She then takes up a horror book at a steep discount, one of the cheaper ones she can get, not expecting much out of reading the horror book she so picks. Especially since she bought the e-book for under CA$5, taxes included. But man did the experience of reading the horror book unsettle her.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Only 30 pages in and she already feels even more uneasy than when the reading of the book began, and she read about one-tenth of it. That’s enough for tonight, I don’t want my sleep to be even more troubled than it is already.
Luckily for her, this horror book didn’t seem to induce nightmares tonight. However, upon awakening on Sunday morning, she is left wondering why she got nightmares last night, and past romance books she read, hockey or not, didn’t. Even the darkest ones.
Even when this horror book, like the book she recced to Caro earlier, features an unhealthy couple. A villain that had no luck in love, and a female lead he looks to for salvation. About the lengths the villain is willing to go to trick the victim, erm, lead into getting a date from her. And not just trickery either: the villain even goes deep into stalking territory.
And even when she thinks she is reading a romance book, it feels like the villain has become more toxic, more abusive towards the lead when he kidnaps her.
By then, she manages to finish reading the book by noon. What appears to surprise her about reading the book is how similar it feels compared to some dark romance books she read in the past, except for the ending. The cold, hard truth hits me like a ton of bricks. Yes, the ending is happy on some level, since the villain is brought to justice, but even seeing the villain condemned, the whole ordeal left scars on the lead, who was a key witness of the resulting trial. A belated happy ending, though, and with the couple separated.
And it is then that Glitter DMs Caro about how horror books might overlap with dark romance ones:
Glitter: Even though Player Masher might not be to my taste, I read a horror book this morning and yes, past romance books I read and recommended did feel like a horror book
Caro: It’s OK if Player Masher is not to your taste, no hockey romance is for everyone; just don’t criticize it at every turn on air since you weren’t constructive
Maybe I should rec the previous books I read if people ask for horror book recs rather than romance ones. It might not be 100% the same, but often the changes to make to a dark romance book to turn it into a horror one can be made in the last ~20% or so, Glitter seems to have a bulb flashing in her mind. I guess, there are those books with a “be careful what you’re wishing for” element to it. However, I should read Capitolium’s manuscript, hoping that dealing with protagonists from a different age bracket would yield a different result.
Glitter is bewildered by what she read from the person who challenged Caro to even write Player Masher in the first place. Billet family? What is the meaning of this? It seems that, initially, poor grades forced his hand, and he enters the US Priority Draft. Oh God… That guy has left home for senior year in high school, and must juggle education as well as hockey. I want to see his lead hook up with the daughter of the billet family. Like a good found family kind of romance, as what he seems to go for. But here it seems to alternate between hockey and the academic life of the guy, at least for the early stages, she starts reading about how he has more freedom among his billet family than his old one. And yet, as soon as the QMJHL’s season begins… the billet family attends the game.
“What’s going on here? It seems like both Capitolium and Caro are writing hockey romance books that are too heavy on the hockey! But unlike Caro, Capitolium doesn’t stream the writing process of the book!” Glitter yells by herself.
I guess, I know who to ask for my next rec, romance or horror: Sampoong! He usually tends to read spicier books than what these two are writing! Glitter then starts her time in the game Caro plays, and get the battle pass quests done for the week.
However, Glitter not being as good a player of that TRPG, she runs the weekly gauntlet at a lower level, lunatic, whose stats are more in line with a party of four player-controlled max-level units, and is happy with getting a mid-grade unit for her first weekly quest. Which she promptly sends on a dispatch quest, along with other characters, of which her pool is more limited.
And yet, she still needs to earn some money to get other missions done so she can score the requisite number of kills of a certain unit type, as well as play a certain number of PvP matches. I might never get to Caro’s level on the PvP leaderboard, but a break from reading romance is enough for me.
Meanwhile, Caro is still riding the high of the early days of NaNo and still writes like crazy, as she is now writing the scenes leading up to the day where Gustavs finally has a chance to prove himself on the third defense pair. As per usual for a lot of defensemen claimed off waivers. And, of course, it’s then that Gustavs is formally introduced to the greater Constellations community. During the pre-game presentation of the opening night’s roster.
Might want to have Emma comment on Gustavs’ social media at some point after the game, and hence give each other a way to stay in touch. I was yelled at for putting in too much hockey, but I trust Glitter to leave future streams before I start writing on air, Caro starts thinking about what awaits her next, taking some notes about the next plot point. It’s then that she receives a DM from Capitolium:
Capitolium: You failed to realize the following: even if you had some relatively good characters, even if you managed to integrate the hockey, both on-ice and the transactional, perfectly, readers will judge your book by the relationship and not by the hockey
Oh crap, not Capitolium, too! I already had it hard enough with Glitter, but I tolerated him because he made an effort to be constructive to me on air, unlike Glitter! An annoyed Caro starts wondering whether this project, this whole challenge, has the potential to turn into a nightmare. Plus she feels like any chemistry between Emma and Gustavs will develop later, especially since they are still at the stage where they are oblivious to each other’s signs of love. But he feels that I wrote “relatively good” characters, whatever that means this early in a book, so maybe it’s not all bad.
Caroline: Yet, your bitterness was partially borne out of how poorly the hockey was integrated into hockey romance books